Canon EF 24-70mm f/4L IS USM Lens Sample Pictures

The secluded beach at Polihale State Park in Kauai, Hawaii is one of my favorites. This location is great for photographing the sand and cliffs in the warm light of the setting sun.
 
While the sand on a beach may all appear the same, you can often find something different to work into your composition. Here, I found little channels created by erosion. The channels were straight, but by shooting the contour from a close angle, they become oft-desired curves in my composition. The curves separate this photo from many others I didn't find very interesting.
 
This location also has full view of the setting sun, but I needed more time to explore the area to find a foreground other than the basic (though still beautiful) sun-into-water composition.

Haleakala National Park in Maui, Hawaii holds many months worth of photographic compositions. Actually, with the speed that the clouds change at this 10,000' altitude, perhaps there are a lifetime worth of photos awaiting to be captured here.
 
While this is a popular sunrise location, the quality late afternoon light is great for photography purposes. While I captured many variations of this scene, I like the lack of intersecting lines in the top and bottom of the frame of this image.

Hawaii has a wide variety of beach sand, but Black Sand Beach in Waianapanapa State Park had one of my favorites. The sand size varied from tiny grains up to round pebbles as shown in this photo.
 
It was in this location that I proved that Gore-Tex trail running shoes hold water very well - and might not be the best footwear for photographing this subject.
 
Because the pebble size I was photographing was still below the water line at times, I needed to move into place and get my shots before getting out of the way of the next incoming wave. Most of the time, this tactic worked.
 
I rarely regret shooting landscape details along with the grand scenes. Having macro capabilities built into this lens is a real bonus.

The history memorialized at Pearl Harbor in Oahu, Hawaii is deep. And the memorial over the sunken USS Arizona is beautiful with a polarized sky behind it.

You can't tell from this picture, but it was shot in the rain. The light rain came on suddenly - just as the sunset was reaching peak color. I was not too concerned about my gear as both the camera and lens were sealed against such rain, but keeping the front element dry (for optical reasons) was a bit of a challenge. Always keep a microfiber cloth handy.
 
Rain comes from clouds and clouds are needed for dramatic sunsets. In this case, I'll take the rain.
 
I was shooting with two cameras at this time. I was capturing (handheld) waves hitting the cliffs with a telephoto zoom (70-300 L) and was capturing the sunset with a normal zoom on a tripod. This image is an HDR that utilized three exposures to get a little detail in the shaded rock and cliffs.

The day had been partly cloudy with no hint of rain when out of nowhere this little storm showed up. From the house, I grabbed the 24-70 f/4 L IS, installed a CPOL filter, mounted the lens to a 5D Mark III and ran for the clearing.
 
I quickly framed and shot a wide variety of images. For this particular composition, I used the in-the-shade section of mountain as a clean base with the rest of the details creating an overall balance to the image. I shot what looked right to me, but many of the lines fall into the rule-of-thirds. The warm color is courtesy of the setting sun.
 
The f/5.6 aperture is rather wide for an all-in-focus landscape photo, but with no close subjects, this aperture provided adequate depth of field. With the no-time constraint this rainbow opportunity provided, I relied on image stabilization to capture a sharp 1/20 second image at 70mm – in the wind. I clone stamped a few blowing leaves out of the foreground of this image, but left the leaves in some of the captures with larger quantities of blowing leaves in them, better revealing the windy conditions.

Yes, it snows in Hawaii. And the snow adds to the already-impressive sights at the top of Mauna Kea on Hawaii's Big Island.
 
It is not hard to drive from sea level to the nearly 14,000' summit of Mauna Kea (with the right 4x4 vehicle and the right conditions) in under 2 hours. It is also not hard to get mountain/altitude sickness by doing so. Even after acclimating at 9,000' for nearly an hour, I could feel the lack of oxygen. Children should be monitored especially closely if attempting this trip.

You can't miss this beautiful grove of Rainbow Eucalyptus Trees on the road to Hana in Maui, Hawaii.
 
Getting good light on these trees was much more challenging during my time there - during the winter rainy season. Keeping other people out of the image was also a challenge.
 
A B+W circular polarizer filter was used to get better-saturated colors.

This image was taken from Sliding Sands Trail in Haleakala National Park under a late afternoon sun.
 
The location and timing for this shoot was very good, but my decision to trail run at nearly 10,000' after driving there directly from sea level proved to be not so smart. Mountain sickness is a bad feeling - and does not immediately go away with altitude reduction.
 
For composing this image, I avoided significant lines running through the top and bottom of the frame for a clean look. The curving lines of contrast within the frame are balanced.

I'm just back from a 10-day photo trip to St John, USVI. St John is an extremely beautiful island and landscape photography was intended to be a major component of my trip, but I found myself highly challenged in this regard. I'll share more about the primary reason for this challenge later, but lack of color in the sky at sunset was another challenge.
 
My St John, USVI photo gallery is predominated by blues and whites. While the Caribbean blue water under full sun is probably my favorite color, one of my goals for the recent trip was to capture some new colors from this island. Nine evenings of chasing sunsets resulted in pics from only one night with color worthy of sharing.
 
It had been a long, hot day of hiking and I was tired. Analyzing the sky, I decided to go light with only the Canon EF 24-70mm f/4 L IS Lens and Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 L IS Lens and a single Canon EOS 5D Mark III body. I guessed that these two lenses would cover my entire range of needs for the balance of the evening. What I didn't plan adequately for was the sky completely exploding overhead, leaving me seriously focal length limited on the wide end. While I captured many images of the cropped sky show, I wanted the bigger picture.
 
There was no time to hike back to get the Zeiss 15mm f/2.8 ZE Lens from the SUV, so I took the next-best alternative – I captured a few panoramic photos that, when stitched together, frame nearly all of the color in the sky that night. Using completely manual settings, I captured overlapping images (overlapping by at least 1/3) and later stitched them together using Photoshop's Photomerge tool. Containing nearly 100 megapixels, this panoramic image has many good crops available in it. I can decide what a print will look like later.
 
In the end, a colorful sunset helps accomplish the new color for St John goal.

Hanakapiai Beach is located about two miles into the famous Kalalau trail on the Na Pali Coast of Kauai, Hawaii. While this beach tends to be a popular hiking destination, I was able to isolate these bright green moss-covered rocks from the crowd. A circular polarizer filter and the right timing of clouds and sun delivered this look.

Getting a photo of a cannon in Valley Forge National Historical Park is easy. Getting a warm light on the cannon simply means timing your photo with a late day sun (or early day sun depending on which cannon you are shooting). Having a little cloud that looks like smoke coming from the cannon come by at the right time? Priceless.

Kauai's Waimea Canyon is referred to as the Grand Canyon of Hawaii. The color and lack of flora in this canyon are in stark contrast to the rain forest that lies just beyond.

I counted on the Canon EF 24-70 L IS Lens for my macro needs while traveling in Hawaii. And made use of this lens' macro capabilities in the back yard of our Haiku, Maui rental house.
 
It rained almost continuously for my nearly one week stay here, but I eventually decided to photograph this unique bamboo in the rain. I aligned more bamboo in the background for added interest.

All pictures look better with a rainbow in them. The problem is often the rain part.
 
I captured this image during heavy rain and very strong winds. I parked the SUV to provide some protection from both, but only partial protection was ultimately afforded.
 
Definitely use a circular polarizer filter when photographing rainbows. But, be careful with how the filter is adjusted. Improper filter rotation will result in the rainbow being erased instead of being enhanced.

Drive to the end of Makena Road in Maui, and the terrain becomes very different.
 
No, Haleakala has not gone active - those are regular clouds. The foreground is a mix of coral pieces and lava. Together, it all makes a colorful picture.
 
Note that few subjects absorb light better than volcanic rock. This stuff eats light - like a light sponge.

A settings sun casts a warm light on the already inviting beach at Polihale State Park in Kauai, HI.
 
Note that the road into this state park is very rough. And your rental car company may not be interested in coming back here to get you should you break down.
 
As usual when shooting at the ocean, I spent a lot of time waiting for just the right wave action for my photos. Here I had washed-smooth beach with a strong white foam-edged wave accented by the low sun angle shadow.
 
I placed the waterline about 1/3 of the way down into the frame. The rule of thirds often works well for water-against sky horizons.

There are few green sand beaches in the world and fewer that are accessible. Papakolea Green Sand Beach is an approximately 6.6 mile round trip hike. Or, hire a local to drive you there in their high clearance 4x4. The drive is half of the experience.
 
Yes, the sand really is green. A CP filter was used for this photo.

Sunsets are often beautiful, but I'm always looking for something more. Silhouettes are one very easy strategy I use for these strongly backlit shots. Find a foreground shape that complements your image and expose for the sunset itself.
 
The 24-70 f/4 L's image stabilization was relied upon for this 1/6 second handheld image.

The hike up to the 400' Waimoku Falls in Haleakala National Park, Maui is about 2 miles. As soon as I arrived, it started to rain. Once again having weather sealed gear proved valuable to me.
 
I got my shots (handheld) and then cased the camera for the hike back down.

With the heavy clouds below and the sun at my back, it was not surprising to see a rainbow (faintly doubled) from the 13,796' summit of Mauna Kea.
 
More surprising to me was how many snowboards/snowboarders there were in Hawaii. Never would have guessed that there were so many.
 
Also very amusing was the incredible number of pickup trucks that came down the mountain filled with snow for snowman building back down at sea level.

Sliding Sands Trail is the primary trail at the summit of Haleakala Volcano. The scenery visible from it is very impressive.

Old Rag Mountain in Shenandoah National Park has its share of rocks and rock piles. You will want your camera cased while navigating the trail at the top of this mountain.

I can almost picture the molten rock flowing into this scene many years ago. Large areas of the Big Island are lava fields. This particular flow was in Kekaha Kai State Park.

See the aqua blue water in this photo? Caribbean blue may be my favorite color and this is the color that I hoped to capture a lot of on my recent St John, USVI photography trip. I mentioned in the 100 Megapixel Francis Bay, St John, USVI Sunset post that I faced a big challenge to my landscape photography on this trip. That challenge was dust blowing nearly 5,000 miles from the Sahara Desert to the Virgin Islands, causing haze.
 
To get the brilliant blue color I like so much requires white sand under clear water and a clear sky with an overhead sun. The white sand and clear water are generally abundant on this island, but the haze caused by dust took out the clear sky requirement and with the exception of about one day, the blue water did not pop like I wanted during my trip. Since that one day was partly-to-mostly cloudy, shooting was only good for part of that day. Some clouds are of course desired for adding interest to an otherwise solid blue sky, but too many clouds become an issue.
 
This picture of Ram Head and Booby Rock was captured during a break in the clouds with part of Ram Head, the distant sea and the island under shade from the clouds. I shot a variety of compositions of this scene, but liked the panoramic captured handheld at 53mm the best.
 
Often, an extremely wide angle of view captured using a circular polarizer filter will result in an unevely darkened sky, and I have been asked about the evenly polarized skies in this image. The key was that this image was captured at 12:48 PM under a very high sun. With the sun was high in the sky, the 90 degree angle of strongest sky darkening is at the horizon – the entire horizon, making wide panorama skies captured using a polarizer filter look great (if significantly more sky was included in this photo, you would start to see the sky lighten toward the top of the frame). I frequently shoot under a high sun for this reason. Use a circular polarizer filter to create mid-day amazement.

The clouds were rolling through the areas around the summit of Haleakala creating beautiful and constantly changing scenes.

The girls were my support staff on this trip and we rolled into Whistler late in the afternoon after a challenging 10 hour drive through western Canada. We checked into the hotel, unloaded, drove to the other end of the village to park in the free lot and began walking back through the village to find dinner. The girls were a bit vague about what we were doing on this end of our trip ("Whistler" wasn't a location they knew much about) and they were quite awestruck as we came into the beautiful and impressively-designed Olympic village. Fitting were the Olympics rings being one of the first sights seen in the village as the 2016 summer Olympics were scheduled to begin a few days later. To be at one of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics venues was very fun to them.
 
I knew that our schedule was tight (and I was really tired and hungry), so I tried to keep moving them along (vs. stopping at every shop we were walking past). We finally found a restaurant (with reasonable prices and still open), ate and went back to the hotel. It was nearly midnight until we got to bed and that meant the morning was not going to be an early one as I needed enough sleep to drive to Vancouver the next night.
 
By the time we packed in the AM, finished breakfast and waited in line for lift tickets, it was afternoon and we arrived near the top of Whistler at about 2:00 PM. As we got off of the gondola, we noticed a sign stating that the last lift ride down was at 5:00 PM. While it would have been nice to know that piece of information before heading up the mountain (and even better to know it the night before), the 6 mile (9.5km) High Note Trail was a high priority and we were determined to make loop trail hike happen. We had another line and chair lift to go before hitting the trail head and we proceeded. So, we were left with about 2.5 hours to do the moderately difficult hike with photos of course being the primary goal.
 
Although I had the MindShift Gear BackLight 26L loaded with several lens options, I mounted the Canon EF 24-70mm f/4L IS and left the pack on my back for the duration of the hike, due to the time constraints. That lens mounted to the Canon EOS 5Ds R worked great for the scenery encountered on this hike. I hadn't brought a tripod along and, with image stabilization doing its job, I didn't need one.
 
If photographing landscapes during the middle of a sunny day, I nearly always have a circular polarizer filter installed and did on this day. By cutting reflections, these filters significantly increase saturation, making colors "pop".
 
The hike ended up being mostly a run with stops for photos while trying to resist some of the constant photo temptations along the way (for time reasons). At about 7,000' (2,133m) in elevation, the view over the valley 5,000' (1,524m) below (including the turquoise-colored Cheakamus Lake seen in this image) was continuously spectacular. The timing of this trip, to coincide with wildflower season, was also perfect. I captured numerous images I liked and, though exhausted, made it back to the lift in time to ride down. That was a very good thing as hiking the 3 mi (5 km) down the steep mountain would have been rough at this point.

The hardest part of capturing this shot was getting the coin to stand on its side at the right rotation. Otherwise, this is a an easy shot.
 
The coin is a near-perfect, highly-reflective 2010 American Eagle Silver Dollar in proof condition. The background is black velor draped over a box. The coin is sitting on very clean back-painted black glass (my desk). A tiny piece of card stock is under the coin to prevent it from rolling. A Canon Speedlite 600EX-RT in a small softbox was triggered by a Speedlite Transmitter ST-E3-RT. The softbox was directed downward onto the coin (I should have moved it back slightly to get an even reflection across the entire top of the coin).
 
Insure that nothing reflects back onto the coin. Then use a macro-capable lens to capture your shot.

I encountered numerous lion's mane jellyfish (Cyanea capillata, AKA the giant jellyfish or the hair jelly) while walking the docks at Seward Harbor in Alaska. With a Canon EF 24-70mm f/4L IS USM Lens mounted to the Canon EOS 5Ds R, I was focused on harborscapes and was not expecting small subjects such as jellyfish. While I could have gone back to the SUV for the 100-400mm Lens, I was able to find a couple of these subjects just below the dock, allowing me to occasionally get close enough to fill much of the 70mm frame.
 
By photographing a lion's mane that was near the surface with a circular polarizer filter cutting the reflections and by adding some contrast in post processing, I was able to get an underwater look from a surface-captured image. In post, I removed some debrise in the water and increased saturation a bit to brighten the colors. Hard to see at this resolution is the small jellyfish, one of the lion's mane jellyfish's prey, just out of tenacle reach toward the left side of the frame.